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Comment by theorique | Hacker News Reader

What's the life cycle on laptops?

I tend to upgrade every 18 months or so. I'm sure many other professionals and power users upgrade even more frequently.

At this rate, as the article states, we've voted with our actions.

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Average refresh cycle has historically been around 3 years. Today, most businesses are pushing to 4 for laptops, 6 for desktops.

Normal people tend to upgrade when the batteries become untenable to deal with.

An 18 month lifecycle for Apple kit is indicative that you spend between 3-6x than the average.

I think most people buying a $2000+ laptop keep it for more than 18 months. I know I would.

For personal machines, I agree. I had a 12" MacBook from 2004 until 2010 until it was stolen, though it was my secondary machine from about 2007 forward.

This is about a 3 year upgrade cycle. Since 2010, it seems to have accelerated, but mainly due to work (I've bought only one MacBook for personal use since 2010 - all others were company computers).

I tend to aim for a minimum of 3 years.

Yeah. My $1400 laptop, and 3 years officially up next month. Funny thing is, because of the GPU (GTX260M) I'm pretty confident that I can easily pull another year out of this. Unless they launch a new console.

It's strange that not just games, but even software requirements are indirectly influenced by consoles.

Mine is a mid-2009 13" MBP closing in to 3 years of age, with original battery (just crossed 600 cycles), swapped the 160GB hd with a 128GB Samsung ssd and inflated 2GB ram to 8GB, then down to 4GB because I did not use them and they were cheap RAM, so killing the battery (very noticeable on sleep) while the 4GB come from my iMac. I could have had those upgrades from the start (and not have to hack TRIM support on each upgrade) save from the money I simply did not have at the time I bought it.

For work, I've not had a laptop last more than 3 years before dying, but I have a habit of punishing them. My current MBP (bought a couple of months ago as I wanted the top end Sandy Bridge with all the kinks ironed out rather than a 1.0 Ivy Bridge model) I'm hoping will make it to 4. It's an experiment, never had a mac laptop before for work (my last mac laptop was a PowerBook Duo 280c).

Strangely I still occasionally use a Sony Vaio SRX51p/B from 2001 occasionally for light surfing or IRC over SSH and that works fine apart from the battery.

Yeah, the 18 month cycle tends to be work related. I tend to run more like 3+ years for personal laptops.

Even so, once I've used a machine for a few years, it tends to feel like sending good money after bad to "upgrade" a 2+ year old laptop. At that point I wind up using them for odd jobs (e.g. print server, media server) rather than my primary computer.

Lenovo G530(low end) from approximately this time in 2009 - so 3 years. Mostly works in desktop replacement role. Battery is effectively gone. Keyboard failed after a tea spill, I use an external instead. Fan has made scary noises once or twice, and monitor has gone through several episodes of pinched cables but those two problems eventually go away by themselves(especially after transporting the laptop, which jostles things around).

I'm definitely considering a new one but may hold off until fall/winter.

I upgrade as needed, and consider it a fine piece of work when someone produces a laptop that keeps performing for 3+ years.

I've had my Acer Aspire 5670 since 2007 now, still serves me nicely.

Are you Gordon E. Moore?

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